“My fucking Grandpa on the other hand. That fucker used to love raping me. He wasn’t able to get off unless I was crying.”
Nobody else seemed shocked at her candor. I was totally creeped out. I just wanted to leave.
“What about you?” she asked. “Got any fucked up childhood stories?”
On the one hand, I did have and it would have been easy to talk about it. But on the other hand, I no longer wanted to be there. And, I was even more disturbed because I was turned on. I mean, here is this incredibly sexy chick talking about getting fucked. She’s talking about it in detail, like, “I used to love sucking Daddy’s dick. It was my favorite lollypop” and “I had to pretend I didn’t like it when Grandpa ass fucked me.” I mean these are disturbing fucking stories, but I felt my dick getting hard as she said it. I wanted to fuck this chick even though she was totally fucked up and at the same time, I wanted to get as far from her as possible.
So when she asked me to tell her a story, I just made an excuse about how normal my childhood had been. She pressed and I said that I had lost my father — we went to the park and I never saw him again. It was a lie, but I meant it to be funny and ended with "I always pictured him somewhere with amnesia.”
“I bet that’s his girlfriend’s name,” she laughed. I laughed too. Had she been lying about all that shit? I have no idea.
John passed out on Erma’s bed (of course) and his buddy left with some friends who arrived to take him back to the bar. Mathilda went to bed and Erma sat up talking with me. Finally, I kissed her and to my surprise she kissed me back. When I put my hand on her breast she pushed it off and pointed to the bedroom door while shaking her head. "John’s in there?"
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"No, but he’s in my bed." I didn’t know what the fuck that meant. She said I could crash on the couch but I felt sort of like I had been raped and molested. I left. "Give me a call," I said.
She never did. I didn’t call her either. I should have offered her a lollypop.
Unemployment
Filing for unemployment was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I’d always taken pride in not receiving any ‘handouts’ from the government. One of my roommates decided for me when he pointed out that it was me who had paid for the benefits I would collect. I decided to take back my ‘donations’ to this government.
I filed by phone, answering the questions the computer on the other end asked. It struck me as funny that the computer’s elimination could have provided at least one job to a person who was unemployed. The mechanical voice told me I had to apply for three jobs a week in order to collect my benefits and gave me an appointment so that I could attend ‘orientation.’ The state required that I attend “unemployment orientation” before the benefits of joblessness began.
I woke up late for unemployment. I got there 45 minutes late. It felt nice letting my body sleep as long as it wanted and the receptionist told me I could attend the next session.
The first thing I noticed in the classroom was a sign that said “ Please turn off your cell phones.” I suppose it is a problem keeping the unemployed off their cell phones in Seattle. The facility was called ‘Work Source.’ It was a typical institutionalized place with white and yellow walls. Classrooms.
It had lots of literature encouraging the poor to quit breeding. There were people with disabilities, older folks, and people of color. Nobody looked really down and out. Nobody seemed like they were going to die if they didn’t find employment soon.
People seemed to be pretending they wanted to find a job. That’s the difference between the homeless and the unemployed, the homeless don’t bother pretending they want a job; they just don’t have one. Both groups share a degree of dirtiness though. It’s just a little more obvious on those without houses and showers.
I was nervous but it was a cakewalk. Three people had been selected to turn in their search logs, showing where they had applied for work so far. The telephone computer voice had told us about this requirement. I was not one of them. The woman looked to be sure my logs reflected applying for at least three jobs this week. They did even though I hadn’t. I just wrote down some big corporation names and addresses.
The workshop group was made up of older housewives, dropouts, and freaks. One guy in his forties was wearing a leather jacket covered with rainbow colored beads. He had matching beads in his hair that hung down a little past his shoulders. He was distinctly birdlike and kept pecking the instructor with questions about job services on the internet and the waiting period to hear back from Boeing.
The instructor went to great pains to describe the ways we could avoid applying for work and still meet the required three job applications per week. Things like coming to ‘work source’ and working on our resumes, learning how to use the computers, or taking a typing course. Bedtime material. Pure Sominex. It was all about how to make your resume dynamic and answer interview questions the best way.
There were several interesting programs where the state would pay for a college education, I thought about doing that, but already had a useless Associates Degree and didn’t really want more. The whole ‘orientation’ lasted a few hours.
As I walked out of the Unemployment Department, I felt happy to know that the orientation counted for the three jobs I was supposed to apply for that week. My check arrived a few days later. All I had to do for the next eighteen weeks was to call in every Sunday to the phone computer and answer a serious of questions using ‘1’ for yes and ‘9’ for no. It took six minutes the first time but got quicker as I memorized the sequence of answers. 1, 1, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, #.
Recycling and Garage Sales
I helped Aquillo Mallot do his rounds at Western Washington University when it was time for the students to go home. We hit every dumpster on the campus twice a day for two weeks. You see, the students had bought things to make their dorms more comfortable. Things like microwaves, stereos, posters, books, artwork, clothes, and computers. Tons of stuff. They had to leave the dorms empty and most of them were driving home and didn’t want to rent a U-Haul to take along all their possessions. So, in the true American way, they just threw everything out.
In two weeks we filled a friends garage to capacity with just about everything you could think of. I was wondering what we were going to do with it all, but Aquillo had a plan. Every weekend throughout the summer we had garage sales in the yards of people we knew.
Aquillo and I were pulling $300-$400. Towards the end of summer it was between $10 and $100, but then a funny thing happened. The college kids returned and in two weekends bought back almost everything that was left (plus the things we had found during the summer) and gave us both close to $500. You see? Recycling can be profitable.
Another friend used to buy rejected textbooks from schools in Texas and sell them to other school districts that were still using them. That was giving him enough dough to support his family. But then, one day he was driving his pickup past an oil refinery and saw stacks of tools and equipment being carried out by the workers. Having an eye for value, he stopped and asked if they were throwing the stuff away. They said yes and when he asked if he could take it they said yes again. So, he loaded everything up in his truck and took it to a drilling supplier in Houston where he sold all of it for close to $90,000. True story.
You see, what was happening is that the big corporations work just like the government does. They operate on a concept called a fiscal year. All budgets run for one fiscal year (usually October to October.) At the end of the fiscal year, the Chief Financial Officer and his accountants figure out where they can slash budgets so they can put money elsewhere.